Simon’s Blogs

Hi! I’m Simon. I also go by SimonTheSorcerer online and my real name is Simon András Péter, but just call me Simon for short. You are on Simon’s Blog Park, the home of my blogs and everything else.

What I do: I create and manage successful blogs in difficult niches. And I do not use spammy marketing techniques, I’m doing this as ethically as I can. All of my blogs are dedicated to responsibility, safety and I’m committed to providing genuinely useful information to my visitors.

Why I do it: Difficult niches (gambling, legal highs, binary options, viagra etc…) should not be synonymous with SPAM and us, website owners can make a difference!

Simon’s Legal Highs & Entheogens is a blog focusing on the natural, herbal highs which are legal in many parts of the world. We are strongly against dangerous research chemicals and you won’t find any designer drug on the website, only natural psychoactive plants.

Simon’s Duty-free Online Shopping Blog focuses on online duty-free & tax free shopping opportunities and methods. These opportunities are not very well known, few people know that you can actually buy duty free products online.

FAQ – commonly asked questions

Difficult niches (e.g.:gambling, legal highs, binary options, Bitcoin gambling, viagra, e-cigarettes etc…) are market segments notorious for black hat marketing techniques (SPAM, link buying, hacking websites, misleading customers, publishing fake reviews, manipulating review websites etc…). They are also unwelcome on most platforms (e.g.: most social media network, many PPC networks) and they are barred from many other forms of advertising. This is why they are ‘difficult to market’, hence the name.

Because I’m doing it ethically. Payday loans are never a good idea, and you should avoid them. Even if you need cash fast, your local credit unions are always a better option. If you are a blogger with morals, that’s all you have to say about payday loans. This does not require a whole blog. There are many niches like this.

I will not create porn blogs. But yes, I will create adult blogs. These blogs will not contain explicit pornography, or even nudity, but they will tackle adult topics e.g: live cam sex sites, poppers & aphrodisiacs, sex toys. They will answer such questions, like “Which live webcam site offers the best price per value? (It’s Cam 4 gold membership btw…) Which aphrodisiacs are scientifically proven to work? (poppers and some other plants, most of them are already on my legal high blog) and similar questions. You can expect these blogs to be ready sometime in 2017. (UPDATE: aphrodisiacs and poppers won’t get separate blogs, they were integrated into my legal highs blog, adult blogs will come in 2017)

My websites do not contain pronography. Sure, some of the topics are mature, adult, but in most countries it’s fine if you are 14 -16+. However, none of the stores I work with sell anyone under 18 anything, and none of the websites I talk about let anyone under 18 register, so there is not much point visiting if you are under 18.

It’s easy, I was always drawn to the “dark side” of the world. And I always wanted to show people that these things are a natural part of our world, not something to be swept under the rug. Just like in your personal life you shouldn’t dismiss and try to suppress negative emotions (anger, hate, jealousy etc…). Instead you should ask: “What can I learn from this? Why am I feeling this way? What does it tell me about myself?”. So too should we approach these difficult niches. If we approach these niches with an open mind, and if us bloggers focus on responsibility and value creation, we can change the seedy image and integrate them fully into society, for the benefit of all.

Simple. Personal branding. I hope to create some sort of cohesive brand across all my blogs. When it comes to difficult niches, you need every help you can get, and brand recognition can certainly help. And people trust people, not websites!

They had actually. But as I mentioned, difficult niches are not welcome on most social media networks (certainly not welcome on the most popular ones, the ones worth exploring). After reaching a certain number of followers and activity level (after about 1-2 years, depending) the profiles were targeted by moderators (temporary ban, then deleted). Putting time and energy into an active social media presence for an affiliate blog focusing on difficult niches just does not make sense from a practical point of view (can be deleted any time, bad CTR and conversion rates, paid promotion not possible or very restricted). If we try it again in the future we are moving to Reddit and Youtube, but they are not social networks.

Due to the extreme amount of SPAM I received (automated marketing outreach, e.g.: Buzzstream), my email address can no longer be found on any of the websites. If you wish to contact me just google my name or the name of the website + email address (this ensures I don’t get automated SPAM, and cold calls). You can easily find my email address online. Do not call me on the phone please!

Sure. Send me an email. Please do not call me on the phone! My email address is floating around on internet so if you manage to find it you can use it. It’s not on any of the websites on purpose (this way I don’t get automated SPAM, and cold calls). Just google my name or the name of the website + email address. If I don’t respond it means I’m not interested.

I was born in a communist country, in the USSR (Hungary was communist till 1990), just shortly after the Chernobyl accident in neighboring Ukraine.

My parents were really poor and only had high school diplomas, and we lived in public housing.

I have learned to speak English when I was around 9, watching TV, Cartoon Network, which for some strange reason was available only in English (with no subtitles) in Hungary for years (Why? I have no idea.).

I had to miss out one year to go to work abroad (in the Netherlands and in Germany, working in factories, sometimes 50+ hours per week) to get enough money to pay for my college tuition.

I studied in a German-hungarian bilingual high school, and then I studied Economics in English at college, which means elementary school was my last Hungarian only school despite the fact that I never studied abroad.

Career:

2011 – 2012 ING Insurance (now NN) Intern, then briefly Content manager – I started my career as an intern in the online marketing department of Europe’s biggest life insurance provider. Then, after my internship, I worked briefly as a content manager. I was responsible for all of the content on the company’s website (and the internal websites), which I managed, edited, uploaded, fixed according to on-page SEO factors, keyword research and the needs of other departments and supervisors. I learned to use two CMSs, basic online marketing and how to navigate the workplace environment in a multinational corporation (which is a skill in itself).

2012 (about 6 months)Freelance SEO – After I quit I needed to make some money and I had plenty of free time so I started doing SEO freelance jobs online. The pay was horrible, freelancers from developing countries bring the prices down extremely. The marketplace is full of cheaters and scammers. However, I did learn a lot about different ways to make money online and what works and what not, what is a scam and what is not. And I had time to experiment with a whole lot of these methods. Being an online freelancer is a horrible job and I did not really learn much about SEO or online marketing. Online freelancers are mostly hired to do various forms of spamming.

2012 – 2013 HigherClick Kft. (Online Marketing Agency) Online marketing professional, then Online marketing manager – I got lucky and landed a job in Budapest at a then startup online marketing agency run by a Scottish and a French guy working exclusively with English companies. This was a great job and I ended up staying here for almost two years. I learned a LOT about SEO and online marketing in general. We worked with huge US, UK companies (Fortune 500) but because we were contractors we could remain independent, flexible and innovative. We were really at the forefront of SEO and online marketing, and we made miracles happen. When I was promoted to an online marketing manager I was able to delegate tasks to 15 people and managed a budget of about $50,000 monthly and was solely responsible for one of the biggest clients of the company.

I was hired when the company had only 5 employees and I watched the company grow to having 30 full time employees and around 20 part-time employees. Without this experience I would not be able to make a living online as an entrepreneur/webmaster today.

2013 – 2014 Simon’s Online marketing Kft. – Startup online marketing agency – I quit and I started my own online marketing agency. I was really good at what I did and my prices were really affordable. However, SEO in a B2C agency format is not a good business opportunity for various reasons (ROI problems, constant algorithm changes, Indians bringing the price down, rampant outsourcing, scammers, absolutely horrible clients, complex on-page optimization made impossible by non-cooperative clients and lack of access to backend, more explaining than actual work etc…).

Yet somehow, I managed to grow my startup from a one man company to having 2 full time employees and 5 part time employees in just 8 months. However, I’ve burnt out and my websites (,which by this time I was developing for two years on the weekends, and on all my days off) started to bring in more than pocket change. I scaled down, and started focusing on my websites full time.

2014 -> Simon’s Online marketing Kft. – Simon’s Blogs –This is where I am now. Working full time on my websites and trying to grow them.

UPDATE 2016: Recently I hired two people and an intern, but one of them, after a couple of months left for college and the other one decided that he was not comfortable working with difficult niches. And the intern was not up to the standards I expected. I spent 3-4 months training, helping, correcting, supporting them and when they were ready for independent, unsupervised work, they left. This cost a lot of money, and a small business has only a limited budget, and all of mine was spent on this. So I’m doing it on my own again and I’m saving up money to buy a small office somewhere in Budapest. Once I bought a small office I will start hiring people again. So, this is where I am at right now.

Skills:

What I’m capable of: Basically right know I’m capable of building up a small B2C online marketing agency from the ground up and to do every type of client work that needs to be done, and also administrative/background tasks (accounting, finances, legal stuff, sales, hiring & training employees etc…) .

I’m also capable of coming up with great affiliate marketing ideas and creative online marketing solutions, which I then put in a business context. I analyze the market and find potential niches and adapt my ideas to the needs and opportunities of these niche markets. Then I make a detailed plan with a focus on ROI milestones and quantitative data. I also create all the actual content, the website, the web pages, custom graphics from the ground up, WordPress frontend, backend included (content manager level, I’m not a developer). And through various online marketing techniques I turn this fresh new website into a profitable business.

Idea -> Plan -> Execution -> Marketing -> Profitable Business – I’m capable of doing any of these steps, or all of them.

What are the things I’m really good at: “Business thinking” (quantitative management, with a strong ROI focus) – that’s the only way to grow a small business.

What are my biggest weaknesses: Every person has positive and negative traits. I’m no different. I have already written about what I’m good at, here is the other side of the coin: I have no patience for people, whom I deem intellectually inferior. I strongly believe in authoritarian, top down and control style management. This means that employees can comment, ask questions, make remarks, but the final say is always mine and I expect them to follow my instructions to the letter. I’m balancing this out with flexible working hours, telecommuting opportunities and by using performance management software instead of constant micromanaging.

What I’m working on right now: I’m trying to quantify the ROI of hiring one person and the turnover point. This is extremely difficult considering that almost every variable is subjective and unquantifiable. A mathematical analysis is impossible, but I’m trying to estimate milestones and to create a framework as best as I can.

I will be working on hiring people (after I bought an office) and I will work on creating a self-sustainable, self-managing system. Coworkers should be able to work independently (after a sufficient time of course) and the company should run like a well oiled machine even without my day-to-day oversight. This will probably take years to achieve.

And of course I’m working on the websites full time. This goes without saying.

About Simon’s Online Marketing Kft.

Simon’s Online Marketing Kft.: This is my company (Kft. is LLC. in English) and it is registered in Hungary, Budapest. It is a one-man company at the moment, but at various times I had some help. The company was registered in 2013.